Posted on 12/09/2014 4:05:28 PM PST by bad company
Ping!
Complaining about magical thinking, in church. Funny.
Just like St. Nicholas, we need to slap the heretics out of Orthodoxy.
I could never be an Orthodox or a Catholic. I don’t have a good enough attorney. Their explanations of everything read like the legal briefs in a securities fraud derivatives industry lawsuit.
Funny how Jesus wasn’t that complex.
You could always apply yourself a little.
Save Thy people, O Lord,
and bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victory to Thy Church over her enemies,
and protect Thy people by Thy Holy Cross!
If it ordinates women, it is not Orthodox. For similar reasons that, if it can breathe underwater, it’s not a raccoon.
The author is a convert priest from Anglicanism. They are an odd bunch, so many of these convert priests. They carry terrible baggage into Orthodoxy with them. They know all the rules, or what they think are rules, but sadly and even after many years, never come to understand Orthodoxy or our Orthodox phronema. It’s not magical thinking, it’s our mindset, our particular worldview.
This priest seems not to understand the fundamental principle of the Orthodox church. “Conforming to whatever the canons of modernity demand” only means that those who do so are no longer Orthodox, and have ex-communicated themselves from the church. There is no schism, as a schism would require a different, defensible, interpretation of the theological tenets of the church. Instead, this is just some laity and even (former) priests removing themselves from Orthodoxy, no matter how much they claim to be “modernizing” it.
I understood it perfectly and I know little about the Orthodox church aside from a short I had with a colleague of mine who goes to one.
typo...short conversation I had*
Transubstantiation isn't complex either.
Neither was Jesus' curing of the blind, lame and deaf.
The Healing Touch of Jesus
…21 for she was saying to herself, "If I only touch His garment, I will get well."
22 But Jesus turning and seeing her said, "Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well." At once the woman was made well.
Jesus was the antithesis of complex. Being a good person is simple as well, NOT COMPLEX as all.
It isn't always EASY but it's sure not complex.
I've heard Catholic teaching all my life...NOT complex.
Jesus said it: Matthew 22:37
Jesus said to him: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Very simple.
Today, people really seem to want an explanation of who Mary was. People like to know the milieu of that first century Anno Dominum. Nothing wrong with explaining to people the theology of the seven Sacraments either. I'm not afraid of learning and I'm sure you aren't either. No one forces you to believe anything. It's always, of course, your choice to believe whatever you want. Jesus IS the Way, the Truth and the Life and THAT is simple too.
The Catholic Mass is really very simple, just a MEAL, a Sacred Meal, with the Word of prophets (old and new testament readings) and Jesus' words in the Gospel before the Sacred Meal.
It's a SIMPLE meal of bread and wine transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus. And we Catholics have the privilege to be able to take Him into our bodies.
As for attorneys, you've been reading too much anti-Catholic rhetoric. The mainstream media LOATHE both Catholics AND Evangelicals and NEVER miss an opportunity to either ridicule them, demean them and/or to expose any wrong-doing of any kind by any Catholic priest, nun, friar, brother or Evangelical minister...especially sins against those "absolutes."
Jesus CHOSE to leave His Church humans, to His Twelve Apostles. He might have done is any other way, but He chose that way.
Since there are 3.3. billion Christians in the world, 1.6 billion being Catholics, with the other 1.7 billion Christians belonging to over 40,000 different Protestant denominations, I would say that the Apostles and 72 disciples did a decent job of converting the world to Christianity, wouldn't you?
Perhaps a shot in the dark here, but I’m guessing the author is working from the premise that Orthodoxy is already in many pieces. While oversimplifying, the truth is that the Orthodox Church consists of many jurisdictions which are not in communion with each other. Kolokotronis, you cannot say one leaves Orthodoxy in the same way a Roman Catholic can say one leaves Catholicism. Orthodoxy has no single See, but a conciliar system which, again, is in many pieces. Out of communion yes, but out of claimed Orthodoxy no.
The call here seems to be to recognize the history of the fraction tearing at the whole. The devil does not fight over conquered ground.
This isn’t true. The Orthodox Church by definition includes the various hierarchies that are in communion with each other. That’s what it means to be an Orthodox church. As to “claimed Orthodoxy,” why, you can claim to be a duck, too. That doesn’t make you one.
Convert disease.
But the warning signs should be acknowledged none the less. My bride is Catholic, and has suddenly realized that many of the priests in our home diocese are no longer Nicean Christians (they deny the Incarnation).
When a priest, on Christmas, gets up and says that Jesus was not “a god” till maybe after the Resurrection, you have a problem. Such things don’t happen overnight though, and I had noticed this years ago.
I've never heard anything like that in a Catholic church, and I hope I never do. But it would justify contacting the bishop in a NY minute.
“When a priest, on Christmas, gets up and says that Jesus was not “a god” till maybe after the Resurrection, you have a problem. Such things don’t happen overnight though, and I had noticed this years ago.”
I’ve never seen anything even hinting at this sort of heresy in the Orthodox Church. You want to remember that in Orthodoxy, the People, the Laity, are the guardians of Orthodoxy. A priest or a hierarch starts preaching heresy and the People of God rise up and solve the problem. I’ve seen it myself. There is a danger with some converts, especially early in their life as Orthodox. Many of them, it seems especially the ones who go on to become priests in some jurisdictions, can be described as suffering from a sort of spiritual PTSD. They can be dangerous. Recently there was a big dust up about an OCA convert priest at base supporting the gay lifestyle, including gay marriage. When the complaints started, the OCA top metropolitan, another convert, seemed to support the priest. Both were condemned across the Orthodox world. In another instance, another convert priest, from Episcopalianism I think, announced that it was his job and purpose to “demystify” Orthodoxy. He got slapped down hard by the People across his jurisdiction.
We know, inherently, what is Orthodox and what is not by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We know when a dogma is true when we live it out in our lives individually and collectively. We react to the World in an Orthodox way. You may have seen flashes of that here on FR. But none of it is as a result of “Magical Thinking”. It is the result of 2000 years of living Orthodoxy.
Check out the dust storm Fr. Robert Arida out of Boston has kicked up.
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